Category: David Attenborough

Posted on in David Attenborough, Extinction

The 100 species at risk of extinction – because man has no use for them

English: Zoologists meeting at the Zoological ...
English: Zoologists meeting at the Zoological Society of London (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

The 100 species at risk of extinction – because man has no use for them! 48 countries, including Britain, urged to help prevent loss of our ‘weird and wonderful’ creatures. The Independent reports

The spoon-billed sandpiper, three-toed sloth and a long-beaked echidna named after Sir David Attenborough are among the 100 most endangered species in the world, according to a new study.

The list of at-risk species has been published as conservationists warn that rare mammals, plants and fungi are being sacrificed as their habitats are appropriated for human use.

More than 8,000 scientists from the International Union for Conservation of Nature‘s Species Survival Commission (IUCN SSC) helped compile the list of species closest to extinction, which was published by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).

Conservationists fear the species in 48 countries, including Britain, may die out because they don’t offer obvious benefits to humans.

The list is headed by the “weird and wonderful” spoon-billed sandpiper which breeds in Russia and migrates to Bangladesh and Myanmar. There are just 100 breeding pairs of the birds left in the wild with that number declining by a quarter annually.

There are also just 500 pygmy three-toed sloths left on the uninhabited Isla Escudo de Veraguas, 10 miles off the coast of Panama. They are half the size of sloths found on the mainland and are the smallest and slowest sloths in the world. But their numbers are declining with fishermen and lobster divers “opportunistically” hunting the small animals, the report said.

Within Britain, the brightly-coloured Willow Blister fungus which grows only on trees in Pembrokeshire is listed as being critically at risk of extinction due to “limited availability of habitat”. The report warns that a single “catastrophic event” could cause its total destruction.

Zaglossus attenboroughi, or Attenborough’s echidna, named after the eminent naturalist and BBC wildlife expert, is one of just five surviving species of monotreme, ancient egg-laying mammals found in Australia and New Guinea 160 million years ago. Today the mammal’s home is the Cyclops Mountains of the Papua Province of Indonesia but it has been listed as in danger due to the destruction of its habitat by loggers, agricultural encroachment and hunting.

Professor Jonathan Baillie, the ZSL’s director of conservation, said: “The donor community and conservation movement are leaning increasingly towards a ‘what can nature do for us’ approach, where species and wild habitats are valued and prioritised according to the services they provide for people.

“This has made it increasingly difficult for conservationists to protect the most threatened species on the plant. While the utilitarian value of nature is important, conservation goes beyond this. Do these species have a right to survive or do we have a right to drive them to extinction?”

The ZSL’s Ellen Butcher, who co-wrote the report, said: “All the species listed are unique and irreplaceable. If we take immediate action we can give them a fighting chance for survival. But this requires society to support the moral and ethical position that all species have an inherent right to exist.”

Most endangered: facts and figures

Araripe manakin, Antilophia bokermanni 
Where found: Brazil
Numbers left: 779

Sumatran rhinoceros, Dicerorhinus sumatrensis 
Where found: Malaysia and Indonesia
Numbers left: 250 individuals

Pygmy three-toed sloth, Bradypus pygmaeus 
Where found: Panama
Numbers left: 500

Spoon-billed sandpiper, Eurynorhynchus pygmeus 
Where found: Russia, Bangladesh and Burma
Numbers left: 100 breeding pairs

Tonkin snub-nosed monkey, Rhinopithecus avunculus 
Where found: Vietnam
Numbers left: 200

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Posted on in David Attenborough, The Big Butterfly Count

David Attenborough and butterflies

He is the world’s most famous defender of the natural world – but for years, Sir David Attenborough harboured a secret guilt about it.

On his early expeditions from the 1950s onwards as a travelling naturalist for London Zoo and the BBC, he had amassed a stunning collection of spectacular tropical butterflies, which he retained into the years when butterfly-collecting became socially unacceptable.

David Attenborough's Life Stories
David Attenborough’s Life Stories (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

They included exotic swallowtails, fabulous blue morphos from South America and even more impressive, several New Guinea birdwings, which are the biggest butterflies in the word – including a specimen of the famous Rajah Brooke’s birdwing, whose wings are black with electric-green triangles and measure seven inches across.

When Sir David began, in the 1950s, many people in Britain collected butterflies and mounted them in cases in a tradition dating back 200 years, but as time went on views changed and collecting became taboo. So Sir David banished his collection to the loft, but remained anguished about what to do with it.

“I had collected a great number,” he said, “and when it became apparent that this was a terrible thing to have done, I put them in the loft. And I thought, what do I do with these ..they were marvellous things! I had ornithopterans [birdwings].” He said: “This was a great guilt in my life.”

Twenty years ago, however, his guilt was eased. Sir David said: “I happened to meet an entomologist from Cambridge University, and looking deep into the glass of wine, I said I’ve got this problem…

“And he said, I will solve your problem. I will save them for science and they will be used for science. And I gave him the whole lot, and with his students from the entomological department, they mounted them properly, and he put them to good use. I don’t necessarily know that they went into any important collection, but they went into academia. They went into scholarship.”

Sir David, president of the charity Butterfly Conservation, spoke to The Independent about his collecting earlier this week after launching The Big Butterfly Count, the annual survey of the insects, whose British populations are likely to have been very hard hit this year by the excessively rainy weather.

“In my early expeditions I was collecting animals for London Zoo, so it was part and parcel of the same thing,” he said. “I got armadillos, and snakes and boa constrictors, and butterflies.” He said his collection amounted to “maybe a hundred”.

He said he loved butterflies so much because “they are something that is a spark of wonder of the natural world which can fly into anybody’s life.”

He went on: “You don’t have to be wealthy. They come into everybody’s lives once a year, and a buddleia bush covered in butterflies, which I remember as a kid, was one of the most breathtakingly beautiful things anybody could see.

“A whole host of people across the entire social spectrum used to collect butterflies. They can’t any more, quite right, but it doesn’t mean they aren’t as enchanted by them as they ever were.”

Source : http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/sir-david-attenboroughs-secret-guilt-he-used-to-be-a-butterflycollector-7942242.html

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Posted on in Big Butterfly Count, David Attenborough, United Kingdom

Attenborough: Butterflies face worst year ever

David Attenborough and the ARKive
David Attenborough and the ARKive (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Big Butterfly Count, taking place in the worst year on record for the insects, will alert conservationists to species most at risk. The Guardian reports  

If this summer’s 50 shades of grey are getting you down, imagine how miserable it is to be a winged insect. In what is shaping up to be the worst year on record for butterflies, Sir David Attenborough on Wednesday urged people to find a window of sunshine and join the biggest butterfly count in the world.

The wettest April for a century and the dampest June on record has left lepidopterists despairing about the fate of Britain’s59 species, almost three quarters of which are in decline and one third are in danger of extinction.

English: Photograph of a Monarch Butterfly.
English: Photograph of a Monarch Butterfly. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Launching the third year of Butterfly Conservation‘s Big Butterfly Count, the biggest citizen science project of its kind in the world, Attenborough said it was more important than ever to discover if butterflies are dodging the downpour. The count, in which people are asked to record online all the common species they spot in a 15-minute window in their garden or local park, will alert conservationists to the species most in danger so efforts can be better targeted to prevent their extinction.

“The fact that every single person can produce a statistic that is of real value is a great spur,” said Attenborough. “But let’s not underestimate the spin-offs. Many people will for the first time start taking a careful and critical view of their surroundings. The butterfly count helps butterflies but it also helps natural history and eco-sensitivity in this country.”

Conservationists fear that this summer’s extreme weather will trigger local extinctions of rare species such as the heath fritillary, which only flies at 40 sites in Britain, and the high brown fritillary, found in 50 locations. But there are also concerns over common species and Butterfly Conservation hopes the count, which is supported by Marks & Spencer, will reveal how the small tortoiseshell is faring after counts revealed a dramatic population slump for this once-common garden butterfly.

The summer of 2012 may become the worst year for butterflies since records began in 1976. If butterfly sightings are lower than the sodden summer of 2007 it would suggest there are fewer butterflies than ever in the British Isles, as numbers have been in steady decline since the 1970s.

“The enthusiasts and scientists on the ground are very concerned and they are rightly concerned,” said Richard Fox of Butterfly Conservation. “There’s a realistic fear of it being an extremely bad year. Sun-loving butterflies are having to cope with some of the wettest, coldest and dullest spring and summer weather on record.”

Prolonged wet weather prevents caterpillars from thriving and stops adults finding mates and laying eggs for next year’s generation. Most butterflies need warm temperatures and sunshine to acquire enough energy to fly.

Butterflies are experiencing a struggle between the warming effects of climate change, which should benefit sun-loving species, and extreme weather events, which insects struggle to cope with. It is not all doom and gloom, however: climate change is helping 10 species, including the peacock and the Essex skipper, expand northwards through Britain.

A few damp-loving butterflies have also thrived in recent wet summers, most notably the ringlet and the speckled wood. Britain’s butterflies have adapted to survive miserable summers, and insect numbers can quickly recover after dire years. The problem for the rarest species is that they are confined to small pockets of nature reserves – unable to escape local conditions in good or bad years – making them particularly vulnerable to extinction. Poor weather can cause already rare species to enter a death spiral – becoming so small in number that they never fully recover.

As well as count butterflies, Martin Warren, chief executive of Butterfly Conservation, said people could plant wild flowers and grasses in their gardens and called on every park to replace a portion of its mown grass with wild flower meadows to boost butterfly numbers.

“I look on mown lawns with horror,” said Warren. “Some people may think wild flower meadows look scruffy but I would defy anyone to walk through a wild flower meadow full of butterflies and not find that a wonderful experience.”

Links : Henricus Peters, co-chair of NAEEUK

English: Chalk Hill Blue, Sheffield Park. An u...
English: Chalk Hill Blue, Sheffield Park. An unexpected find in the woods east of the National Trust gardens. This area is not normally open to the public but access was granted for the Sheffield Park Gardens Butterfly Day organised by the British Butterfly Conservation Society http://www.butterfly-conservation.org (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jul/12/david-attenborough-butterfly-count

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Posted on in David Attenborough, Primates

Church or natural history ?

What happens when David Attenborough meets the – or is it ‘a’ –  Primate…. Acknowledgements to YouTube and inspired by @Liturgy .

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